Question: Michael is 3 times as old as Ben and is also 16 years older than Ben. How old is Michael?
We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Michael and Ben. Let Michael's current age be $m$ and Ben's current age be $b$ $m = 3b$ $m = b + 16$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $m$ is to solve the second equation for $b$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $b$ , we get: $b = m - 16$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $m = 3$ $(m - 16)$ which combines the information about $m$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $m = 3m - 48$ Solving for $m$ , we get: $2 m = 48$ $m = 24$.